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For two dollars, a hand-built vending machine in Toronto will dispense a random used book into your eager hands. It's a new twist on the traditional cheap or free items often found in boxes or carts outside used book?stores.
You can find the vending machine at the Monkey's Paw, an second-hand?book store on Dundas street. The shop focuses on odd and antique books, but every dealer ends up with a lot of books that for one reason or another just aren't going to fly off the shelves.
Many have them in boxes for a dollar each or sell them in bulk. But Stephen Fowler, proprietor of the Monkey's Paw, had a better idea. He thought a vending machine would be a great feature, although he originally pictured it as a operated by a person concealed inside. His friend Craig Small was more ambitious, however, and actually built a mechanical one out of an old locker; they call it the Biblio-mat.
Fowler described the machine as a success to book news magazine Quill & Quire, although he says he doesn't make any money on the books:
Of the people who have used the thing so far, almost every person has been pleasantly surprised and completely amused. In fact, this is something?I've?observed in the used-book trade: people are always looking for meaning. They?ll get a book and feel as though it was psychically selected for them.
On the outside, the machine is charmingly retro, resembling an enormous packet of?cigarettes. Inside, it is also charmingly retro: A set of pulleys operated electronically, dumping a book from one of three piles into the chute, through which it is, as creator Craig Small puts it, "delivered with a satisfying clunk into the receptacle below."
The Biblio-mat is operational but currently in "beta," says Fowler, perhaps due to the unpredictable nature of a large book falling down a tube. You can watch the machine in action in this video by Small on Vimeo.
via Tucson Weekly
Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBC?News Digital. His personal website is?coldewey.cc.
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